Facebook opens door wider to third party devs with new API

Facebook has announced that it has launched an Open Stream API that will allow …

Facebook has launched an API for its activity stream, making it possible for third parties to create software and services that allow users to directly interact with their streams without visiting Facebook. The Facebook Open Stream API will not only allow client applications to display a user's stream, it will also allow them to filter, mix, and even post comments to various feed items.

For those of you who aren't addicted to Facebook, the activity stream is the Twitter-like list of feed items that displays on your Facebook home page, made up of updates from all of your Facebook friends. Things that they are doing, groups they have joined, relationships they have entered or left, events they are attending, photos they have posted, and more are all part of this stream that will be incorporated into the Open Stream API.

As part of the announcement, Facebook also said that the Open Stream API would comply with the new Activity Streams standard, which is an extension of the Atom feed format. The decision to go with Activity Streams instead of its own format is significant, as Facebook's adoption of the developing standard will help give it the boost it needs to make it to the bigtime.

"Over the last several months, we've been collaborating with the community, hosting meetups at Facebook headquarters, and speaking at industry events about Activity Streams and the open stack," Facebook said in a statement. "We think that working alongside our peers to create an open standard for accessing and consuming streams is the future. We'll continue to make contributions to the standards community and related technologies and are happy to be one of the first companies to implement Activity Streams at scale."

Facebook says that it has already gathered a handful of beta partners to test the new API, including Seesmic Desktop and Adobe with its (infamous?) AIR framework. Perhaps once developers get down and dirty with the API, we might see the proliferation of third-party Facebook clients like we already have with Twitter clients.

Check back with us on Tuesday, when we'll be taking a closer look at the API itself and the Activity Streams draft, as well as their implications for client implementations.